For half a century, NASA and Aerospace have worked closely to increase the scientific and technical knowledge base of the nation and establish the United States as a leader in space technologies and explorations.

Dave Bearden and Roy Chiulli

International Space Station. Courtesy of NASA/STS-114 shuttle crew.

Established October 1, 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) as a U.S. government agency responsible for advancing flight-related technology. NASA added the development of space technology to the NACA aeronautics mission.

NASA’s first high-profile human spaceflight program was Project Mercury, an effort to learn if humans could survive the rigors of spaceflight. Alan Shepard became the first American to fly into space when he rode his Mercury capsule on a 15-minute suborbital mission on May 5, 1961. John Glenn became the first U.S. astronaut to orbit Earth on February 20, 1962. With six flights, Project Mercury achieved its goal of placing piloted spacecraft into Earth orbit and retrieving the astronauts safely.

Project Gemini built on Mercury’s achievements. NASA’s 10 flights in 1965 and 1966 provided more data on weightlessness, perfected reentry and splashdown procedures, and demonstrated rendezvous and docking in space. On June 3, 1965, Gemini astronaut Ed White became the first American to perform a spacewalk.

The Aerospace Corporation supported those early Mercury and Gemini programs, parts of which were overseen by the Air Force. The corporation worked on the Atlas booster and an abort sensing system that would initiate capsule separation in case the Atlas malfunctioned. Aerospace developed a “man-rating” system for the Mercury spacecraft to certify that the craft was reliable enough for transporting humans.

Since that time, Aerospace has supported a number of NASA programs. During the 1970s, for example, Aerospace contributed to early concept studies for the space shuttle. Aerospace worked with NASA on Skylab, the country’s first operational space station, as well as its successor, the International Space Station. The Landsat program, which has been gathering and relaying images of Earth since 1972, has also benefitted from Aerospace support. More recently, Aerospace has made critical contributions to four major NASA programs: the space shuttle, the Hubble Space Telescope, the International Space Station, and the Mars Exploration Rovers.

The Space Shuttle

Aerospace staff in Houston contributed systems engineering and acquisition expertise to the Space Shuttle Upgrade Development Program, which enhanced and upgraded the entire space shuttle fleet.

Following the success of the Apollo missions, NASA and the Department of Defense (DOD) embarked on an effort to make space access more routine. Although the concept of a reusable space vehicle had been discussed for many years, NASA officially began work on such a vehicle in 1970. The Space Transportation System—commonly known as the space shuttle—was formally commenced in 1972 when President Nixon announced that NASA would develop a reusable space shuttle system. Considerable debate surrounded the selection of a shuttle design that would optimally balance capability with development and operating costs. The shuttle was expected to handle DOD payloads as well as NASA projects, and Aerospace helped ensure that DOD requirements were adequately addressed in the final design. Aerospace developed performance specifications and provided cost analyses for the proposed shuttle and related proposals, such as an orbit-to-orbit “tug” and space vehicles equipped with chemical and nuclear propulsion.

NASA decided on a partially reusable, crewed orbiter with an enlarged cargo bay carried by two reusable solid-propellant rocket boosters and an expendable fuel tank. The first orbiter was to be named Constitution, but a national write-in campaign from fans of the Star Trek television series convinced administrators to change the name to Enterprise. The vehicle was rolled out in 1976 and conducted a successful series of glide-approach and landing tests that were the first validation of the shuttle design. The first fully functional orbiter was the Columbia, launched on April 12, 1981, with a crew of two.

The shuttle program has suffered two tragic accidents. The first was in 1986, when Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff, killing its crew of seven. The program was halted until the cause of the accident could be determined. Aerospace supported NASA in the investigation required for the shuttle’s return to flight. In 2003, the shuttle Columbia with seven crew members disintegrated during reentry into Earth’s atmosphere, only minutes before the scheduled conclusion of its 28th mission. The cause of the disaster was traced back to the launch, when a piece of insulation foam on the external tank broke free and struck the leading edge of orbiter’s left wing, damaging the protective heat shielding tiles. Upon reentry into Earth’s atmosphere, this damage allowed superheated gases to penetrate Columbia’s wing structure, causing the shuttle to break up.

NASA convened the Columbia Accident Investigation Board to determine the cause of the accident and recommend changes to increase safety and enhance mission assurance for future shuttle flights. The Aerospace Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies (CORDS) had been established in 1998 to track space debris and investigate reentry breakup characteristics of satellites and rocket stages. During the Columbia accident investigation, CORDS estimated where to look for debris from the orbiter and provided testimony on launch readiness review processes that could help avoid future failures.

As part of shuttle return-to-flight activity, Aerospace engineers used physics and statistics to analyze probabilities that foam or ice from the external tank could again damage the shuttle. Aerospace performed hundreds of impact tests, using actual flight tiles and foam projectiles. Aerospace worked with the space shuttle debris team to refine and improve the analytical models using these test data to better characterize small foam-on-tile damage and refine the understanding of risk posed by small foam debris.

During the launch and ascent in 2005 of Discovery—the first shuttle mission after Columbia—a large piece of insulating foam broke free from the external tank. Aerospace used findings from its work with foam and ice debris to estimate the chances that the foam had damaged the shuttle. Aerospace’s trajectory and impact analyses became a key input in NASA’s decision not to inspect and repair the shuttle in space. Discovery touched down safely at Edwards Air Force Base in California on August 9, 2005.

Hubble Space Telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, orbits Earth high above the atmosphere.

NASA began working with the European Space Agency in 1975 on a plan that would become the HubbleSpace Telescope. Congress approved funding in 1977, and NASA assigned Marshall Space Flight Center the responsibility for the design, development, and construction of the telescope and its support system. Goddard Space Flight Center was responsible for the science instruments aboard the telescope as well as ground control.

Astronauts were training for the mission by 1979, using a telescope mock-up in an underwater tank to simulate weightlessness. The Hubble was originally scheduled for launch in October 1986. However, the Challenger explosion put shuttle flights on hold for the next two years, and the Hubble was placed in storage. On April 24, 1990, the Hubble was launched aboard the shuttle Discovery. The telescope includes five instruments: the Wide Field/Planetary Camera, the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph, the Faint Object Camera, the Faint Object Spectrograph, and the High Speed Photometer.

Aerospace support for the Hubble has included many independent assessments. One such assessment in 1993 analyzed the Hubble’s first servicing mission. Since the rescue of a valuable national asset was on the line, NASA wanted to ensure that the risk of the servicing mission was sufficiently low. A team of 20 engineers had just three weeks to review the nine subsystems on the mission and make appropriate recommendations.

Just weeks after NASA astronauts repaired the Hubble Space Telescope in December 1999, the Hubble Heritage Project snapped this picture of NGC 1999, a nebula in the constellation Orion.

Aerospace provided major contributions to the fourth Hubble servicing mission in 2002, performing an independent evaluation of risk management practices, addressing the benefits and shortfalls of the risk management methodology, and making recommendations for improvement. Aerospace also evaluated the Hubble reliability model and predictions. Mike Weiss, deputy program manager for Hubble at Goddard, provided the following assessment of Aerospace’s contributions: “The Hubble Team’s ability to plan for and execute complex on-orbit servicing missions is built around fundamental risk management practices. To a great extent, we use reliability models and predictions to understand and predict health and safety risks to the HST [Hubble Space Telescope] vehicle. The Aerospace Corporation provided valuable oversight for Hubble’s risk management implementation and reliability modeling.”

In 2006, an Aerospace team received the corporation’s President’s Achievement Award for providing a critical analysis of alternatives for the Hubble Space Telescope servicing and repair mission. The report concluded that a robotic servicing mission being considered by NASA could not be developed in time to prevent the Hubble from lapsing into an unrecoverable state. The Aerospace report and subsequent testimony before Congress influenced NASA’s decision to scrap the robotic servicing mission in favor of sending a crew of astronauts. A National Research Council committee noted that Aerospace’s analysis was “the only quantitative analysis” of the problem. The astronaut servicing mission was ultimately successful.

The International Space Station

These Hubble Space Telescope images, captured from 1996 to 2000, show Saturn’s rings open up from just past edge-on to nearly fully open as the planet moves from autumn towards winter in its northern hemisphere.

During the early 1980s, NASA planned to launch a modular space station called Freedom, but budget and design constraints prevented it from progressing past mock-ups and component tests. In the early 1990s, U.S. officials negotiated with international partners to begin a collaborative space station project—the International Space Station (ISS). The program would combine the proposed space stations of all participating space agencies, including NASA’s Freedom, the Russian Mir, the European Columbus, and the Japanese Kibo. Construction of the ISS began in 1998 with the launch of the U.S.-owned, Russian-built Zarya control module from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Aerospace provided support in analyzing many ISS technical challenges. During the station’s development phase, for example, Aerospace looked at component breakdown phenomena in the design of the electrical power system, such as the dc-to-dc converter unit and the remote power control module. Aerospace also investigated the fiber optics associated with the onboard avionics computer network because NASA was concerned that the installation procedures could degrade the transmission quality of the communication path between avionics boxes. Aerospace assisted in evaluating technology for maintaining the fiber-optic cable installation and signal-integrity equipment. The flight equipment, an optical time-domain reflectometer, was based on technology evaluated by Aerospace prior to the ISS 6A mission, which launched in 2001.

September 2009: Astronauts carry out extravehicular activity on the International Space Station as it passes over Cook Straight, the divide between the North and South Islands of New Zealand. Crews have been trying to outfit the station with critical spares prior to the retirement of the space shuttle, which is scheduled for 2010.

Aerospace evaluated the plasma charging models developed for the space station because NASA was concerned about the level of electrical discharge that might traverse a spacesuit during a spacewalk. Aerospace and NASA examined the orbital environment (i.e., the ambient electron density and temperature, and variations based on orbital parameters and seasons) and the contractor-developed models and compared them with those used for military satellite operations.

Aerospace assisted in developing an observation window that would satisfy stringent optical requirements for on-orbit photographic experiments. In fact, the first astronaut to view Earth from the ISS looked through an Aerospace-developed glass porthole. The internal active thermal control system was evaluated by Aerospace for corrosion and microbial contamination. Aerospace chemists reviewed the system configuration and its operation in the orbital environment, conducted analyses of the material compatibility and possible causes of corrosion, made recommendations of options, and evaluated a contractor-offered solution.

Waste and how it is discarded is a logistical problem for an orbital human-rated station. Trash in space is typically stored for eventual return to Earth via Russia’s Progress spacecraft or the shuttle orbiter. One idea was to discard the trash overboard so that it would disintegrate during reentry. Aerospace was part of a team that assessed the risks to the public from trash that would survive reentry and the potential increase in orbital debris.

With its suite of science instruments, Juno will investigate the existence of a solid planetary core, map Jupiter’s intense magnetic field, measure the amount of water and ammonia in the deep atmosphere, and observe the planet’s auroras. Juno’s principal goal is to understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter. Underneath its dense cloud cover, Jupiter safeguards secrets to the fundamental processes and conditions that governed our solar system during its formation.

The multinational nature of the ISS program offered opportunities to evaluate risk management and mission assurance processes from different cultures and nations. Aerospace supported NASA with independent assessments for encryption analysis for the command-and-control communication of the Zarya module of the space station, evaluation of Russian nickel-cadmium batteries, and analysis of the Mir space station following reentry.

The ISS was designed to operate for at least 15 years, but it could last for decades if parts are repaired and replaced as needed in a timely manner. In 2009, Aerospace was asked to examine the feasibility of extending the life of the ISS, to develop options for deorbiting it at the end of its life, and to assess crew and cargo transportation to the ISS, including commercial transportation options after the retirement of the space shuttle in 2010.

Planetary Exploration

Mars Exploration Rovers

In mid-2003, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers were launched from Cape Canaveral on a 64-million-mile journey to Mars. These twin robotic geologists, Spirit and Opportunity, were to search for rocks and soils that might hold clues to past water activity on Mars. They landed on the planet in January 2004.

Aerospace’s support to this and other Mars missions in recent years has been particularly important. In 2003, Aerospace performed a complexity-based risk analysis, which looked at whether the rover mission was developed “too fast” or “too cheap” and therefore prone to failure. The study compared the relative complexity and failure rate of recent NASA and DOD spacecraft and found that the mission’s costs, after growth, appeared adequate or within reasonable limits.

An artist’s rendering of the Mars rovers. Spirt’s original mission was designed to last for three months, but the rover has outlived all expectation and has instead performed extended missions since April 2004.

Aerospace is providing mission assurance analyses on critical mechanisms, avionics, and other subsystems for two high-profile planetary missions: the Mars Science Laboratory and Juno. The science laboratory is a rover that will assess whether Mars ever was, or is still today, an environment able to support microbial life. Powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, the science laboratory will be able to land in regions of Mars not accessible to solar-powered systems and will carry a host of geologic, biogenic, and environmental instruments.

Juno is a $1 billion NASA project to send a robotic spacecraft to Jupiter. The Juno mission, which will study Jupiter’s interior composition as well as its magnetic and gravitational fields, is scheduled for a 2011 launch. Aerospace reviewed options for mitigating risks on a waveguide transfer switch for Juno and conducted an independent cost estimate and a complexity-based risk estimate in preparation for a Juno status report. Aerospace also supported a trade study on telemetry ground software options for the Juno project and hosted a Satellite Orbit Analysis Program training class for the JPL Juno trajectory analysis team at Aerospace’s Pasadena office.

The Path Forward

In 2009, Aerospace President and CEO Wanda Austin and the late trustee Sally Ride served on the Human Space Flight Review Committee, an independent panel established to review U.S. human spaceflight plans and programs. To support this study, Aerospace was asked to provide independent technical and programmatic assessments of NASA’s human spaceflight program, as well as options and alternatives for the future. The final report, submitted in August 2009, presented various approaches for advancing a safe, innovative, affordable, and sustainable human spaceflight program following the space shuttle’s retirement.

This image, taken from Spirit’s PanCam looking east, depicts the nearby hills dedicated to the final crew of Space Shuttle Columbia. “These seven hills on Mars are named for those seven brave souls, the final crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia,” said former NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe upon making the announcement.

Conclusion

Aerospace’s ability to provide NASA with useful and timely insight is aided by collocation of Aerospace offices at NASA sites, including NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.; the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California; Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas; Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; and Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. In response to increasing NASA requests for Aerospace support, Aerospace formed a new division in 2006 dedicated to the agency.

Through its support in the areas of systems engineering, independent assessment and review, and conceptual design, Aerospace has contributed to NASA’s many remarkable successes. Independent assessments have been particularly important because through them, Aerospace offers comprehensive analyses that contribute to risk reduction and mission assurance. Aerospace expects its relationship with NASA to grow stronger, and looks to the future with excitement as the next frontiers of space exploration continue to reveal fascinating science and help with an understanding of the outer planets, our own planet, and the universe.

In Memoriam: Sally K. Ride

The First American Woman in Space

First published May 2013, Crosslink® magazine

Richard K. Park

“The nation has lost one if its finest leaders, teachers, and explorers.”

–Charles Bolden, NASA administrator

Sally K. Ride, a member of The Aerospace Corporation’s board of trustees for eight years, died in July 2012 at the age of 61. At the time of her death, Ride had endured a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer.

Ride was best known as the first American woman to fly in space and, at age 32, was the youngest person to travel in space when she flew as an astronaut on the space shuttle Challenger in June 1983 (STS-7). She also flew aboard the Challenger in October 1984 (STS-41). NASA had decided that it needed astronauts with more education in the sciences when Ride was picked as one of only 35 out of 8300 applicants for the astronaut training position. Ride had an extensive science education, having earned a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1973 from Stanford University, as well as a master’s in 1975 and a doctorate in 1978, both in astrophysics from Stanford. In later years, following the shuttle disasters, Ride was the only person to serve on both of the panels investigating the 1986 Challenger accident and the 2003 shuttle Columbia disaster.

Space shuttle Challenger launches on STS-7 in June 1983 with Ride aboard.

In the presentation “Reach for the Stars,” which Ride gave at Aerospace in August 2010, Ride recollected the moment she lifted off into space on her first shuttle mission. “I didn’t know whether I was going to be terrified or exhilarated or some combination of those things. I was really surprised by my emotional reaction. When the solid rockets ignited, I was instantly washed over by this incredible feeling of helplessness, because it was so obvious there was nothing I could do to change what was happening. It actually took me a few seconds to fight through that feeling.” She had also told reporters after her first shuttle launch, “I’m sure it was the most fun that I’ll ever have in my life.”

While the public will primarily remember Ride for her participation on the space shuttle flights, her vast accomplishments did not end there. Ride worked at NASA’s Washington headquarters, where she wrote “Leadership and America’s Future in Space.” There, she also founded the Office of Exploration, before resigning in 1987 to work at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Arms Control. In 1989, she became director of the California Space Institute at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and a professor of physics at UC San Diego.

Ride was elected to The Aerospace Corporation’s board of trustees in June 2004 and served on the audit and finance, technical, awards, strategic planning, compensation and personnel, and executive committees. She was the technical committee chair from December 2009 to December 2010.

“As an astronaut, I’m a true believer in the value and importance of mission assurance—the need for an important process; vigilance that the process is well maintained and understood; objectivity, tenacity, and, probably most important of all, integrity about the technical details that you’re studying and working on. When I realized that that was what Aerospace stood for, I thought I couldn’t be prouder to be a member of any board of trustees or directors in the country,” said Ride.

Aerospace President and CEO Wanda Austin, one of Ride’s fellow trustees and a member of the technical committee, recalled working with her and the many contributions she made.

“Everyone knows Sally Ride as the first American woman in space and as a technical powerhouse,” said Austin. “What made Sally Ride so special was her strength of personality and strength of character. I had an opportunity to see her magic in action when we both served on the Augustine Commission.” That commission was also known by its formal title, the Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans Committee.

NASA astronaut Sally Ride on her first space shuttle mission.

Later in her life, Ride became passionate about developing and encouraging young people’s interests in science. She wrote several books for children, including Exploring Our Solar System, The Mystery of Mars, and Voyager. In 2001, she founded Sally Ride Science, a science education company dedicated to supporting girls’ and young women’s interests in science, math, and technology. The organization’s mission is to bring science to life by strengthening teachers’ skills in science and math through training and professional development and by offering real science investigations for students in grades 4–8. Aerospace is a corporate partner of Sally Ride Science and has sponsored several Sally Ride Science festivals. These are held at college campuses throughout the United States and bring together hundreds of young girls for a day of science, hands-on workshops, and guest speakers.

“It is important to give every child the opportunity to succeed and achieve their potential, no matter what that potential might be in. You do not want a 10-year-old to foreclose their options to be a scientist or an engineer because they do not know anything about science; they do not know how cool it is, and they can’t see themselves going into that. You want them to keep their options open so that they can achieve their potential,” said Ride.

Ride was also a founding member of Change the Equation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, CEO-led initiative that is mobilizing the business community to improve the quality of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) learning in the United States. Aerospace is a member of this coalition, and Wanda Austin was among the first to commit to the initiative when it launched in September 2010.

“My first job was to call CEOs to get them to commit themselves and their companies to this concept and join the initiative. My first call was to Wanda Austin, because I knew that this wasn’t going to be a difficult phone call, and that I did not need to convince her about the importance of science and math education both to Aerospace and the nation in general,” said Ride.

“Sally was a dedicated, committed role model for the next generation of kids, especially girls. She spent countless hours in her quest to inspire them to study engineering and the sciences,” said Austin.

Ride received numerous awards in her lifetime, including twice being awarded the NASA Space Flight Medal. She has been inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame and the Astronaut Hall of Fame.

In Defense of the Planet

Earth has been struck by asteroids numerous times in its history—sometimes with devastating effects. Is another major collision overdue? The International Academy of Astronautics held a conference in May 2011 to explore the potential of an asteroid collision and the prospects for avoiding such disasters. William Ailor, principal scientist in the Vehicle Systems Division, cochaired the conference.

The good news: observers find no near-term future threats of a one-kilometer or larger “planet killer.” However, smaller asteroids do pose a threat. “A small asteroid roughly 30 meters in size is big enough to take out a large city,” said Ailor. “There is a growing realization that we need to increase our efforts to find these small asteroids well before they might impact. But they are hard to see until they are fairly close to Earth, so the warning time may be very short.”

The world community is considering ways to prevent such collisions. One option would be to crash something into an asteroid, changing its velocity. This could be accomplished by a nuclear explosion, or by hitting the asteroid with a fast moving “bullet.” Another approach would use the tiny gravitational attraction between an asteroid and a spacecraft parked nearby to slowly pull the asteroid into a nonthreatening orbit.

The 2011 Planetary Defense conference was held in Bucharest, Romania. Aerospace has chaired or cochaired this conference since its inception in 2004, and this year’s was the fourth in the series. For more on potential collision risks, visit NASA’s Near Earth Object Program at http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/.

End of an Era

Space shuttle Discovery launched for the final time (STS-133) from Kennedy Space Center on February 24, 2011. The NASA shuttle and its six-person crew traveled to the International Space Station to deliver a new storage module, an equipment platform, and the first humanlike robot in space. Aerospace supported this last scheduled launch of Discovery.

“We performed studies to assess the risk of damage to the orbiter from foam debris, which became a potential issue when a seven-inch crack on the surface of the external tank was discovered during its first launch attempt. Our findings were used to quantify the risk to the shuttle, and helped clear it for flight to conduct its mission safely,” said Randall Williams, systems director, Civil and Commercial Launch Projects.

This launch marked the 39th flight for Discovery, which first flew in 1984. During its service life, Discovery made two return-to-flight missions and several satellite repair missions and launched the Hubble Space Telescope and Ulysses solar probe. It visited the International Space Station 13 times and spent 365 days in space. Discovery landed at Kennedy Space Center on March 9, 2011. Now retired, it will be displayed at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. NASA has announced where the other two shuttles will retire: Endeavour will go to the California Science Center, Los Angeles, and Atlantis to Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

Aerospace Nanosatellite Launched on Atlantis

The latest in a series of nanosatellites built by Aerospace was integrated onto the space shuttle Atlantis for the STS-135 mission which launched in July. David Hinkley of the Mechanics Research Department is the project manager. The Miniature Tracking Vehicle (MTV) is designed to serve as an orbiting reference for ground tracking systems. It will “demonstrate three-axis attitude control, solid rocket propulsion for orbit modification, adaptive communications, active solar-cell performance monitoring, and radio-occultation tomography in a nanosatellite platform,” said Siegfried Janson, senior scientist, Mechanics Research Department. MTV weighs just 4 kilograms and measures 5 × 5 × 10 inches; it was ejected shortly before shuttle reentry into a 340-kilometer orbit with an expected orbital lifetime of three to nine months, depending on solar activity, said Janson.

The nanosatellite will be controlled using a primary ground station at Aerospace and an Internet-based ground station network consisting of two additional antennas in U.S. territories. Two onboard GPS receivers will provide accurate time and position information to facilitate analyses of tracking errors. Multiple megapixel cameras took pictures of Atlantis as MTV left, thus supplying the last on-orbit photos of NASA’s workhorse space transportation system. MTV is the 12th Aerospace miniature spacecraft launched.

Aerospace Algorithm Finds Broad Application

(Left to right) Andrew Quintero, Matthew Ferringer, and Howard Katzman at the 2011 Aerospace Inventors’ Day celebration. Ferringer accepted the innovation award for the GRIPS team.

The airline industry could reap big benefits from an Aerospace program developed to streamline the design, reconfiguration, and replenishment of satellite constellations. The Genetic Resources for Innovation and Problem Solving (GRIPS) program is a decision-support process that uses evolutionary algorithms, efficient parallel processing on thousands of compute cores, and advanced high-dimensional visualization to solve complex problems, explained Matthew Ferringer, a project leader in the Aerospace Architecture and Design Subdivision. It offers the ability to understand and communicate the key architectural trade-offs in system-of-system designs, he said.

The technology was recently licensed to Apptimation LLC, a startup company that develops and markets decision-support and business applications for the travel and transportation, energy, logistics, and finance industries. Aerospace and Apptimation have demonstrated that by using solutions generated by GRIPS, a small airline could save as much as $1 million a day by streamlining its flight schedule. The Apptimation GRIPS product, called NetXellerate, is also used for short- and long-term strategic planning.

GRIPS was developed by Aerospace with researchers from Penn State University, who participated through the Aerospace Corporate University Affiliates Program. Nearly a decade of research went into its development. The Aerospace inventors, including Matthew Ferringer, Ronald Clifton, Timothy Thompson, and Marc DiPrinzio, were honored in February 2011 with the Aerospace Howard Katzman Innovation Award for their work with GRIPS.

REBR Records Rocket Reentry

William Ailor shows the REBR instrument package nestled within its protective heat shield.

When the Japanese launch vehicle HTV2 reentered Earth’s atmosphere on March 29, 2011, it managed to send detailed information about its temperature, accelerations, and rotational rates as it disintegrated and burned up. That is because it carried a small device known as a reentry breakup recorder (REBR) designed and built by Aerospace. According to William Ailor, principal scientist in the Vehicle Systems Division and director of Aerospace’s Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies, this event marked the first time that such data was collected during the planned breakup of a space object. “Prior to REBRs, there was no data to determine how spacecraft behave during reentry breakup,” said Ailor. “Now we will be able to predict more accurately which parts of the satellite will impact the surface as well as hazards posed by the surviving debris.” The data can aid in the design of space hardware that poses less of a hazard on reentry, he explained.

The HTV2 rocket launched in January 2011, and made its way to the International Space Station. It carried two REBRs; one remained attached to the HTV2, while the second was attached to the ATV2, a European spacecraft. As HTV2 reentered Earth’s atmosphere, the REBR attached to it broke away as designed, and at approximately 60,000 feet, transmitted data to receiving stations before crashing into the southern Pacific Ocean. The recorder was not designed to survive impact, but contained a GPS device to alert scientists to its location. Analysis of the data was expected to take six to eight weeks. The REBR launch and reentry test was coordinated by the Department of Defense’s Space Test Program.